The Great Flood
Last night, you flew away and landed
on another planet,
and now it’s raining Maine Coons and
English Mastiffs.
Soon it will be a deluge all over
the earth and mine
is a wooden ark but not built under
any divine instruction.
There’s no float in my boat and like
everything else will go under.
The fortieth day won’t find me
perched on any mountaintop.
The fortieth night will pass with my
wreckage down in a valley.
In the ancient story, it took the
dove one flight every week
for one month before it finally
found land and never returned.
If you trained that animal, it
would’ve accomplished
its noble mission on the first
attempt.
Karl Sevilla
Karlo
Sevilla of Quezon City, Philippines is the author of the poetry
collections “Metro Manila Mammal” (Soma Publishing, 2018)
and “Recumbent” (forthcoming from 8Letters Bookstore and
Publishing). Recognized among the Best of Kitaab 2018, shortlisted for the 2021
Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition, and thrice nominated for the
Best of the Net, his poems appear in Philippines Graphic, Ariel Chart, Last
Stanza Poetry Journal, San Antonio Review, Moss Puppy Magazine, Bulb
Culture Collective, and
elsewhere.